Members of the Ontario NDP are getting together for a convention this weekend, and there’s a pretty important question they need to answer: Are they going to matter in next year’s election, or not?

All of the recent Ontario political horse-race coverage has centred on the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. It’s Patrick Brown’s PCs who have benefited from Premier Kathleen Wynne’s unpopularity; province-wide, the PCs have generally been polling higher than 40 per cent, while the NDP and Liberals languish 20 points behind.

Polls can shift dramatically once a campaign gets underway, of course. But how is the NDP going to get itself in a competitive position? Relying on the hope that voters won’t like Brown once they get to know him isn’t really a strategy.

This will be the first time the NDP has had a convention since November 2014, when Andrea Horwath was under heavy fire for the hugely disappointing election result earlier that year. Facing a governing Liberal party besieged by scandal and voter fatigue (sound familiar?), the NDP failed to gain a single seat overall, and lost crucial Toronto ridings.

But even worse, in the eyes of many party members, the NDP shed its left-wing principles in an effort to be a safe alternative to the Liberals, with a campaign platform and rhetoric focused on saving people money. The most spectacular part of the backlash was an open letter signed by 34 high-profile party stalwarts accusing Horwath of “running to the right of the Liberals in an attempt to win Conservative votes.”

What the NDP tried that election wasn’t crazy. With the Liberals flailing and PC leader Tim Hudak staking out a hard-right platform, there was a golden opportunity to be the alternative for moderate-minded voters. If it had worked and the NDP had formed government, party loyalists would have been quick to forgive. But it didn’t work, and the loyalists were furious.

At the 2014 convention, it seemed certain Horwath was about to be dumped. Among reporters there, nobody figured the vote of support would come in higher than 70 per cent. The main question was whether she would try to stay on anyway. But then, the Miracle at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre: Horwath got 77 per cent of the vote. The party’s membership gave her one more chance.

It came, however, with a promise on her part. In her convention speech, she pledged to refocus on the NDP’s core ideals of labour rights, social equality, environmental protection and public ownership of energy utilities.

So, fast-forward two-and-a-half years.

The NDP has indeed focused on those areas, particularly on the public ownership issue. It recently campaigned hard for stricter rent controls. The party still engages in some economic populism: Toronto progressives were outraged to see Horwath campaigning against highway tolls. But overall, it has been a more left-wing party.

Yet its reward so far has been to watch the PCs, with their new leader, ride high in the polls. A popular theory around Queen’s Park is that the NDP made a mistake in sticking with Horwath — particularly as high-profile MPP Jagmeet Singh looks set to leave for the federal party.

I’m not convinced the problem is the leader. Horwath’s personal approval ratings are consistently higher than Brown’s and Wynne’s. (Okay, MY approval ratings are probably higher than Wynne’s, which is near single digits.) Unlike the PCs, the NDP is heading into this election with a battle-tested leader who has no risk of wilting under the pressure of a campaign.

The real question is whether the NDP can come up with a big, ambitious platform that resonates with voters. Wynne did that in 2014; Justin Trudeau did it in 2015. Railing against the Hydro One sale isn’t doing it. Tuition assistance has just been massively overhauled. An extensive update to labour laws is imminent. Cap-and-trade is in place. Transit projects are being built everywhere. All of this ground is pretty well covered. New Democrats need some bold ideas of their own, and they need them soon.

Brian Platt is the deputy digital editor for the Ottawa Citizen. Previously, he was based at Queen’s Park as a policy reporter.

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